(Source: http://solotcha.otel.su/photos/index.en.html?ph_photo=149815)

 The town of Solotcha administratively belongs to the Sovetsky District of Ryazan. Nevertheless, Ryazan and Solotcha are divided by 20 km of M-5 highway and Solotcha looks exactly like a village.

There are no apartment buildings, only private. There is only one asphalted street. Not because of poverty but because Solotcha is located in a specially protected natural area. Multistory building and other urbanization are prohibited and nobody really needs it. It is because Ryazan's Solotcha is a local resort, and is extremely popular.

 Ryazan people are proud that they have in the city their own "Switzerland": in winter people come to Solotcha for skiing; in summer they send here their offspring to stay in children's camps, but the local resorts generally work year-round.

Solotcha has quite impressive resort history: it was adapted as a health resort for the residents of the Ryazan Oblast almost immediately after the war. Firstly, there is a clean healthy air: Solotcha stands in dense surroundings of pine forests. Secondly, close at hand flow clean Solotcha and Staritsa rivers, in seven kilometers flows Oka. There are places to swim and sunbathe in the summer. Third, Solotcha is conveniently located, at least from the point of view of Ryazan residents. Solotcha is called the "gateway to the Meshchora".

Meshchora is one of the most popular holiday destinations in central Russia. Meshchora forests and rivers are so valuable that because of them in 1992 was established Meshchora National Park. Besides all these, Solotcha owns a mountain with the unpretentious name The Bald. So, in addition to cross-country skiing, which is incredibly popular in Solotcha (in winter all the neighborhoods are speckled with ski trail lines; on every corner work rental shops); guests have the opportunity to slide down the groomed slope. There was even built a ramp for ski jumping, true in 2012-2013 season it was full of holes and had no stairs up to the top.

But not only adherents of healthy leisure go to Solotcha. The village is considered a kind of cultural companion of Ryazan. In the first instance, because there is the location of house-museum of Ivan Petrovich Pozhalostin (1837-1909), the famous Russian master of prints. The one, whose name was given to Ryazan Art Museum. In Soviet years Solotcha was turned to a resort and cultural town, although before the revolution it was more known as a spiritual center. Solotcha's heart - historically and geographically - is the Monastery of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, founded in 1390 by canonized Grand Prince Oleg of Ryazan (his relics are kept in the monastery to this day).